2017-09-11 20:27:25

A friend and I have to write board exams soon and one of our subjects is book keeping.  We both realized that we can't use any of the calculators we use in practice to write these exams with and we don't really want to spend money on fancy talking calculators for one exam.

Does anyone have any suggestions for a simple to use calculator that is accessible with NVDA?

I kind of just wish I could enter values into notepad and press enter.  I have tried the default windows calculator, but it does not always read all the values, and navigating it is not as easy as it could be.  I am really not looking for anything fancy, as long as it can add, subtract and calculate percentages it will work.

2017-09-11 22:41:12

There are a couple of options you can try.

The first is called Speak on Calc Pad, which can be found at:

http://www.speakon.org.uk/SpeakOn-CalcPad.html

It's self-voicing, and uses Espeak by default, although you can change that. It has basic and scientific functions. One of my friends told me that there was no way he would ever install it because it needs Java to run, and he doesn't like having Java installed on his computers, so if you care about that, try the second option. Otherwise, it's free, it's lightweight, it's fast, and it worked well all the times I've used it.

the other option you have if you don't like this program for whatever reason is to use the classic calculator for Windows 10. You didn't specify that this was the OS you're using, but I think that might be the case because you said that the results weren't easy to navigate, and the interface did change with the new modern calculator app. if that's your issue, and you don't mind replacing the new calculator with a more accessible experience, download the installer for the classic one from here:

https://winaero.com/download.php?view.1795

Personally, I like all of Winaero's utilities, and this is no exception. Either way, you can't really go wrong with these two programs I just mentioned.

The glass is neither half empty nor half full. It's just holding half the amount it can potentially hold.

2017-09-12 04:37:38

Hello there,
for bookkeeping and accounting as we call it, excel or any accessible spreadsheet program works out pretty well and makes things far easier.
Thanks for this topic though, I am using win10 too,and the calculator sucks so bad that I use the calculator in a game instead lol
Grryf

Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been.
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2017-09-12 06:33:28

I also wrote my own calculator -- although I haven't updated it in nearly two years. You can find it at https://www.dropbox.com/s/cijibharz2u5z … .exe?dl=1.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2017-09-12 06:47:14

For basic calculations, Google is an accessible calculator.


Just enter a calculation into Google's search and  get the result.

I  dislike Windows 10 calculator. It has lots of great features, but Jaws becomes unresponsive in the main Window.

Google's calculator  even supports copy and pasting.

2017-09-12 07:47:57

Hi,

well, if you probably got Cygwin flying around on your PC (which is mainly some developer's tool) you also got bc, a command-line based calculator, which is pretty powerful and totally accessible.
But the person before me is right, if you really just need to add, subtract or calculate percentages (which means that you'll simply multiply/devide) you can stay with google. Another thing that works pretty well is some interactive programming language interpreter, like e.g. Python itself. Open the interactive prompt, enter "2+2" and get 4 out of it. Not speaking of that you can work with variables in there too, lol.

There is a pretty damn powerful calculator for the blind available, which also know loads of those high-level mathematic stuff, including vector calculation, matrices and more, but its from a german developer and I don't think that he translated it into English, so that won't be a way to do things right.

Best Regards.
Hijacker

2017-09-12 19:41:09

Thanks for all the responses.  I have quite a few options to look at now, thank you very much.
I will try out some of them tomorrow.

I also wrote my own calculator that works in a command prompt window, but I could not really go back and recheck my calculations and values once they were done.

The Python idea occurred to me as well.  I am no programmer, but I know enough about it to be able to make that work.  The only issue is that I highly doubt I would be able to justify installing a programming language interface on a law society PC to write a book keeping exam with.

As for excel, well, I forgot why I decided against using it, probably because I have not used it since I lost my sight.  I don't really know how to navigate it with NVDA.  Is it easy to pick up?  I don't have a copy of office on my current PC and at work we use open office which I am guessing is close enough, but not quite the same.

I will check out the other calculators though. Thanks again.